Reviews : John Rawls, Political Liberalism, ; Jürgen Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des deomkratischen Rechtstaats, ; Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung: Zur moraliscben Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, ; Philosophy of Mind: Theory and Practice, ; Gunnar Skirbekk, Rationality and Modernity: Essays in Pbilosopbical Pragmatics, ; Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition".

I compare Kant's position on the issue as to whether there exists a right of rebellion with the position that can be attributed to Hegel on this issue. I argue that while Kant must concede that such a right exists when the state no longer respects what he calls the universal law of right. Hegel offers us grounds for thinking that a right of rebellion may exist even when the state has achieved the form of a Kantian Rechtstaat. I (...) appeal to Hegel's understanding of right as the concrete expression of the general will and his account of poverty in order to establish this conclusion. (shrink)

Recently there have been intensive debates concerning the new defenses of liberalism and those labeled the "communitarian" critics of liberalism. The latter argue that the conceptions of the self and human agency presupposed by defenders of liberalism are deficient. For a liberal conception of the self fails to do justice to the social-historical context in which the modern individual has emerged. Liberalism neglects the communal-historical context of political activity. The terms of this debate have reached a stage where such concepts (...) as community and communtarian are becoming increasingly vague and ambiguous. What is badly needed is a rethinking of the substantive issues that underlie these debates. In this respect, one can welcome a revival of interest in Hegel's political philosophy, for many of the issues presupposed by these current debates were thought out more carefully and thoroughly by Hegel. Smith's lucid and thoughtful book is especially timely. Smith seeks to show that the standard conception of Hegel as an antiliberal thinker is too superficial. Hegel appreciated the contributions of a liberal theory of rights and sought to expose the precise points of weakness of liberalism. Rather than being "against" liberalism, Hegel sought to incorporate the "truth" implicit in a liberal theory of rights into a more comprehensive and adequate political theory. Smith begins by adumbrating the origins of the Hegelian project. He then carefully reviews Hegel's immanent critique of the liberal theory of rights and shows how this sets the stage for Hegel's own theory of rights--a theory that gives prominence to the "right of recognition." This culminates in the Hegelian Rechtstaat, which Smith translates as "the rule of law." He completes his study by delineating Hegel's own distinctive idea of Critical Theory and what the controversial claim about the "end of history" really means. (shrink)